The Very Old Folk

It was a flaming
sunset or late afternoon in the tiny provincial town of Pompelo, at
the foot of the Pyrenees in Hispania Citerior. The year must have been
in the late republic, for the province was still ruled by a senatorial
proconsul instead of a prætorian legate of Augustus, and the day
was the first before the Kalends of November. The hills rose scarlet
and gold to the north of the little town, and the westering sun shone
ruddily and mystically on the crude new stone and plaster buildings
of the dusty forum and the wooden walls of the circus some distance
to the east. Groups of citizens -broad-browed Roman colonists and coarse-haired
Romanised natives, together with obvious hybrids of the two strains,
alike clad in cheap woollen togas -and sprinklings of helmeted legionaries
and coarse-mantled, black-bearded tribesmen of the circumambient Vascones
-all thronged the few paved streets and forum; moved by some vague and
ill-defined uneasiness.

I myself had just
alighted from a litter, which the Illyrian bearers seemed to have brought
in some haste from Calagurris, across the Iberus to the southward. It
appeared that I was a provincial quæstor named L. Cælius
Rufus, and that I had been summoned by the proconsul, P. Scribonius
Libo, who had come from Tarraco some days before. The soldiers were
the fifth cohort of the XIIth legion, under the military tribune Sex.
Asellius; and the legatus of the whole region, Cn. Balbutius, had also
come from Calagurris, where the permanent station was.

The cause of the
conference was a horror that brooded on the hills. All the townsfolk
were frightened, and had begged the presence of a cohort from Calagurris.
It was the Terrible Season of the autumn, and the wild people in the
mountains were preparing for the frightful ceremonies which only rumour
told of in the towns. They were the very old folk who dwelt higher up
in the hills and spoke a choppy language which the Vascones could not
understand. One seldom saw them; but a few times a year they sent down
little yellow, squint-eyed messengers (who looked like Scythians) to
trade with the merchants by means of gestures, and every spring and
autumn they held the infamous rites on the peaks, their howlings and
altar-fires throwing terror into the villages. Always the same -the
night before the Kalends of Maius and the night before the Kalends of
November. Townsfolk would disappear just before these nights, and would
never be heard of again. And there were whispers that the native shepherds
and farmers were not ill-disposed toward the very old folk -that more
than one thatched hut was vacant before midnight on the two hideous
Sabbaths.

This year the horror
was very great, for the people knew that the wrath of the very old folk
was upon Pompelo. Three months previously five of the little squint-eyed
traders had come down from the hills, and in a market brawl three of
them had been killed. The remaining two had gone back wordlessly to
their mountains -and this autumn not a single villager had disappeared.
There was menace in this immunity. It was not like the very old folk
to spare their victims at the Sabbath. It was too good to be normal,
and the villagers were afraid.

For many nights
there had been a hollow drumming on the hills, and at last the ædile
Tib. Annæus Stilpo (half native in blood) had sent to Balbutius
at Calagurris for a cohort to stamp out the Sabbath on the terrible
night. Balbutius had carelessly refused, on the ground that the villagers'
fears were empty, and that the loathsome rites of hill folk were of
no concern to the Roman People unless our own citizens were menaced.

I, however, who
seemed to be a close friend of Balbutius, had disagreed with him; averring
that I had studied deeply in the black forbidden lore, and that I believed
the very old folk capable of visiting almost any nameless doom upon
the town, which after all was a Roman settlement and contained a great
number of our citizens. The complaining ædile's own mother Helvia
was a pure Roman, the daughter of M. Helvius Cinna, who had come over
with Scipio's army. Accordingly I had sent a slave -a nimble little
Greek called Antipater -to the proconsul with letters, and Scribonius
had heeded my plea and ordered Balbutius to send his fifth cohort, under
Asellius, to Pompelo; entering the hills at dusk on the eve of November's
Kalends and stamping out whatever nameless orgies he might find -bringing
such prisoners as he might take to Tarraco for the next proprætor's
court. Balbutius, however, had protested, so that more correspondence
had ensued. I had written so much to the proconsul that he had become
gravely interested, and had resolved to make a personal inquiry into
the horror.

He had at length
proceeded to Pompelo with his lictors and attendants; there hearing
enough rumours to be greatly impressed and disturbed, and standing firmly
by his order for the Sabbath's extirpation. Desirous of conferring with
one who had studied the subject, he ordered me to accompany Asellius'
cohort -and Balbutius had also come along to press his adverse advice,
for he honestly believed that drastic military action would stir up
a dangerous sentiment of unrest amongst the Vascones both tribal and
settled.

So here we all were
in the mystic sunset of the autumn hills -old Scribonius Libo in his
toga prætexta, the golden light glancing on his shiny bald head
and wrinkled hawk face, Balbutius with his gleaming helmet and breastplate,
blue-shaven lips compressed in conscientiously dogged opposition, young
Asellius with his polished greaves and superior sneer, and the curious
throng of townsfolk, legionaries, tribesmen, peasants, lictors, slaves,
and attendants. I myself seemed to wear a common toga, and to have no
especially distinguishing characteristic. And everywhere horror brooded.
The town and country folk scarcely dared speak aloud, and the men of
Libo's entourage, who had been there nearly a week, seemed to have caught
something of the nameless dread. Old Scribonius himself looked very
grave, and the sharp voices of us later comers seemed to hold something
of curious inappropriateness, as in a place of death or the temple of
some mystic God.

We entered the prætorium
and held grave converse. Balbutius pressed his objections, and was sustained
by Asellius, who appeared to hold all the natives in extreme contempt
while at the same time deeming it inadvisable to excite them. Both soldiers
maintained that we could better afford to antagonise the minority of
colonists and civilised natives by inaction, than to antagonise a probable
majority of tribesmen and cottagers by stamping out the dread rites.

I, on the other
hand, renewed my demand for action, and offered to accompany the cohort
on any expedition it might undertake. I pointed out that the barbarous
Vascones were at best turbulent and uncertain, so that skirmishes with
them were inevitable sooner or later whichever course we might take;
that they had not in the past proved dangerous adversaries to our legions,
and that it would ill become the representatives of the Roman People
to suffer barbarians to interfere with a course which the justice and
prestige of the Republic demanded. That, on the other hand, the successful
administration of a province depended primarily upon the safety and
good-will of the civilized element in whose hands the local machinery
of commerce and prosperity reposed, and in whose veins a large mixture
of our own Italian blood coursed. These, though in numbers they might
form a minority, were the stable element whose constancy might be relied
on, and whose cooperation would most firmly bind the province to the
Imperium of the Senate and the Roman People.

It was at once a
duty and an advantage to afford them the protection due to Roman citizens;
even (and here I shot a sarcastic look at Balbutius and Asellius) at
the expense of a little trouble and activity, and of a slight interruption
of the draught-playing and cock-fighting at the camp in Calagurris.
That the danger to the town and inhabitants of Pompelo was a real one,
I could not from my studies doubt. I had read many scrolls out of Syria
and Ægyptus, and the cryptic towns of Etruria, and had talked
at length with the bloodthirsty priest of Diana Aricina in his temple
in the woods bordering Lacus Nemorensis.

There were shocking
dooms that might be called out of the hills on the Sabbaths; dooms which
ought not to exist within the territories of the Roman People; and to
permit orgies of the kind known to prevail at Sabbaths would be but
little in consonance with the customs of those whose forefathers, A.
Postumius being consul, had executed so many Roman citizens for the
practice of the Bacchanalia -a matter kept ever in memory by the Senatus
Consultum de Bacchanalibus, graven upon bronze and set open to every
eye.

Checked in time,
before the progress of the rites might evoke anything with which the
iron of a Roman pilum might not be able to deal, the Sabbath would not
be too much for the powers of a single cohort. Only participants need
be apprehended, and the sparing of a great number of mere spectators
would considerably lessen the resentment which any of the sympathising
country folk might feel. In short, both principle and policy demanded
stern action; and I could not doubt but that Publius Scribonius, bearing
in mind the dignity and obligations of the Roman People, would adhere
to his plan of despatching the cohort, me accompanying, despite such
objections as Balbutius and Asellius -speaking indeed more like provincials
than Romans -might see fit to offer and multiply.

The slanting sun
was now very low, and the whole hushed town seemed draped in an unreal
and malign glamour. Then P. Scribonius the proconsul signified his approval
of my words, and stationed me with the cohort in the provisional capacity
of a centurio primipilus; Balbutius and Asellius assenting, the former
with better grace than the latter. As twilight fell on the wild autumnal
slopes, a measured, hideous beating of strange drums floated down from
afar in terrible rhythm. Some few of the legionarii showed timidity,
but sharp commands brought them into line, and the whole cohort was
soon drawn up on the open plain east of the circus. Libo himself, as
well as Balbutius, insisted on accompanying the cohort; but great difficulty
was suffered in getting a native guide to point out the paths up the
mountain. Finally a young man named Vercellius, the son of pure Roman
parents, agreed to take us at least past the foothills.

We began to march
in the new dusk, with the thin silver sickle of a young moon trembling
over the woods on our left. That which disquieted us most was the
fact that the Sabbath was to be held at all. Reports of the coming
cohort must have reached the hills, and even the lack of a final decision
could not make the rumour less alarming -yet there were the sinister
drums as of yore, as if the celebrants had some peculiar reason to be
indifferent whether or not the forces of the Roman People marched against
them. The sound grew louder as we entered a rising gap in the hills,
steep wooded banks enclosing us narrowly on either side, and displaying
curiously fantastic tree-trunks in the light of our bobbing torches.

All were afoot save
Libo, Balbutius, Asellius, two or three of the centuriones, and myself,
and at length the way became so steep and narrow that those who had
horses were forced to leave them; a squad of ten men being left to guard
them, though robber bands were not likely to be abroad on such a night
of terror. Once in a while it seemed as though we detected a skulking
form in the woods nearby, and after a half-hour's climb the steepness
and narrowness of the way made the advance of so great a body of men
- over 300, all told - exceedingly cumbrous and difficult. Then with
utter and horrifying suddenness we heard a frightful sound from below.
It was from the tethered horses - they had screamed, not neighed,
but screamed... and there was no light down there, nor the sound
of any human thing, to show why they had done so. At the same moment
bonfires blazed out on all the peaks ahead, so that terror seemed to
lurk equally well before and behind us.

Looking for the
youth Vercellius, our guide, we found only a crumpled heap weltering
in a pool of blood. In his hand was a short sword snatched from the
belt of D. Vibulanus, a subcenturio, and on his face was such a look
of terror that the stoutest veterans turned pale at the sight. He had
killed himself when the horses screamed... He, who had been born and
lived all his life in that region, and knew what men whispered about
the hills. All the torches now began to dim, and the cries of frightened
legionaries mingled with the unceasing screams of the tethered horses.
The air grew perceptibly colder, more suddenly so than is usual at November's
brink, and seemed stirred by terrible undulations which I could not
help connecting with the beating of huge wings.

The whole cohort
now remained at a standstill, and as the torches faded I watched what
I thought were fantastic shadows outlined in the sky by the spectral
luminosity of the Via Lactea as it flowed through Perseus, Cassiopeia,
Cepheus, and Cygnus. Then suddenly all the stars were blotted from the
sky - even bright Deneb and Vega ahead, and the lone Altair and Fomalhaut
behind us. And as the torches died out altogether, there remained above
the stricken and shrieking cohort only the noxious and horrible altar-flames
on the towering peaks; hellish and red, and now silhouetting the mad,
leaping, and colossal forms of such nameless beasts as had never a Phrygian
priest or Campanian grandam whispered of in the wildest of furtive tales.

And above the nighted
screaming of men and horses that dæmonic drumming rose to louder
pitch, whilst an ice-cold wind of shocking sentience and deliberateness
swept down from those forbidden heights and coiled about each man separately,
till all the cohort was struggling and screaming in the dark, as if
acting out the fate of Laocoön and his sons. Only old Scribonius
Libo seemed resigned. He uttered words amidst the screaming, and they
echo still in my ears. "Malitia vetus - malitia vetus est ... venit
... tandem venit ..."1

And then I waked.
It was the most vivid dream in years, drawing upon wells of the subconscious
long untouched and forgotten. Of the fate of that cohort no record
exists, but the town at least was saved - for encyclopædias
tell of the survival of Pompelo to this day, under the modern Spanish
name of Pompelona...